Pierre Berton's War of 1812 (67 page)

Zebulon Pike lies prostrate among his mangled followers. A huge boulder has crushed his ribs, torn a large hole in his back. His
aide and pupil, Nicholson, is dead. So is the unfortunate Canadian sergeant.

Pike’s wounds are mortal and he knows it. How ignominious—to be killed by a falling rock! Not for him the gallant death, waving his sword in the teeth of the fray, achieving the instant martyrdom of a Nelson or a Brock. Time only for a few gasping phrases for the history books: “Push on, my brave fellows, and avenge your general!”

As the surgeons carry him from the field, the troops give a sudden huzza. The General turns his head at that. Someone tells him that the Union Jack has been hauled down from the shattered fort and the Stars and Stripes is going up. He manages a wan smile. The Americans have won the battle of Little York, yet somehow, in spite of the cheering, Pike’s victory is not quite the triumph that Washington hoped for. The two warships in the harbour will not bolster the American fleet on Lake Ontario. One is in flames; the other has got away. And the British regulars, who ought to have surrendered, have slipped out of the bag before the noose can be pulled tight. The British army escapes to fight another day, and Brigadier-General Zebulon Montgomery Pike, expiring aboard
Madison
, his head pillowed on the captured British flag, will go down in history not as a military hero but only as one who accidentally gave his name to a mountain that somebody before him discovered and somebody after him climbed.

John Strachan, en route from the garrison to his home, hears the explosion of the magazine just as he enters the town. He hastens to his house, finds his wife in a state of terror, bundles her and the children off to a friend’s home some distance out of town, then rushes back toward the garrison. In a ravine he finds Sheaffe and the regular troops preparing to leave. Later, Strachan will demand to know why the Major-General did not seize this moment to counter-attack. But Sheaffe, a good half mile from the scene, has no way of knowing the havoc the explosion has wreaked on the enemy. With his cause
lost, the most sensible thing he can do is burn the naval stores and the big vessel
Isaac Brock
, under construction in the harbour, and retire with his men to reinforce Kingston.

Young Patrick Finan, still dazed by the spectacle of two magazine explosions, has joined in the retreat with his family. The two-week journey by foot, horseback, and finally canoe is no pleasure trip. The spring snows have just melted; a heavy rain pelts down; the Kingston road is a river of mud; and the settlers en route are hostile. On the way out of town, the Finans meet several recent arrivals from below the border who are cheered by the American success. Young Finan is shocked, but the atmosphere does not dissipate as the troops move eastward. Believing the Americans have won the war, many a settler does not hesitate to avow his disloyalty. And when the Finan family begs for transport, the farmers, who have purposely concealed their horses and wagons in the woods, insist they have none.

In York, the command of the militia devolves upon Lieutenant-Colonel William Chewett, the sixty-year-old surveyor general, and his second-in-command, Major William Allan, the merchant. This pair has been detailed by Sheaffe to deal with the enemy. But Strachan, who turns up just as the arrangements are completed, has no intention of being left out. He volunteers his services, and in the days to come, the clergyman and not the officers will be chief negotiator for the people of Little York.

Ely Playter, meanwhile, struggles to catch up to the bands of militia retreating from the shattered garrison. Breathless after escaping from the explosion, he looks over his shoulder to see the first American skirmishers breaching the line of wooden pickets on the edge of the ditch protecting the Governor’s house. A few spent musket balls sizzle his way, to no effect. Now, as the militia are halted, Playter watches while a small group heads back toward the garrison with a white flag. A few moments later the negotiators return; they have been told to come back in fifteen minutes.

Playter marches toward town with the militia. An infantry captain gallops up, asks for help to fire the marine stores and the brig
Isaac Brock
. (The
Duke of Gloucester
was, by good fortune, out
of the harbour when the attack came.) When the dockyard is safely ablaze they repair to Jordan’s Tavern, where some of Playter’s friends are surprised to find him alive.

Though grateful to be in one piece, the young farmer is exhausted by the day’s events. He heads up Yonge Street to the family farmhouse, plagued by fears of the unknown, apprehensive of the enemy’s intentions. How will the Americans treat him and his friends? He is almost too tired to care. When he reaches his home he flops on his cot and sleeps like a dead man.

At the home of the Commissary, George Crookshank, on Front Street near the western edge of the town, an acrimonious argument is taking place between the Americans and the militia negotiators. The invaders are furious at the burning of one vessel and the escape of another. The major object of the expedition—to change the delicate balance of naval power on the lake—has been frustrated in the most dishonourable fashion,
after
the white flag of surrender has gone up. The Americans, who expected to deal with Sheaffe and his regulars, are mortified to find that the real army is out of reach and they must treat with amateur soldiers and a clergyman.

Strachan, who is rapidly assuming the leadership of the York negotiators, replies with spirit to the American representatives—Colonel George Mitchell of the 3rd Artillery and Major William King of the 15th Infantry. He and his associates knew nothing of the burning of the ship, he argues, and cannot be held responsible. He puts the blame on the retreating regulars. When the Americans castigate Sheaffe, the Canadians, who will never forgive the General for deserting them, agree. At last a surrender document is worked out. Strachan is not happy with it but must accept it, having no bargaining power.

Under its terms, all arms and public stores are to be given up to the Americans; the militia will not be made prisoners but will be paroled and thus neutralized for the remainder of the war unless
exchanged. The officers are to be imprisoned. Private property will be respected.

King and Mitchell go back to the American lines to have the document ratified. They do not return. A junior officer arrives in their stead, arrests Major Allan, takes his sword, marches him off in the centre of a column of soldiers.

But now a black-clad figure dashes into the heart of the column, protesting this breach of the traditional white flag. It is Strachan. He catches up with Allan and marches proudly with him through town. Strachan the martyr? Not entirely; his clerical habit gives him a certain invulnerability. Yet it is an act of considerable courage, and the people of York will not forget it. In standing up to the enemy, John Strachan has given them back a little of their bruised pride.

Allan is held, but Strachan is not. With the terms of surrender still unsigned, those of the militia who can be found are imprisoned in the garrison. Their officers are freed under parole until the morning. Benjamin Forsyth’s riflemen are appointed to patrol the town, a decision that strikes fear into the inhabitants, for this is the corps which, in Strachan’s view, “bears the worst character in the American army.”

Yet the looting on this night is comparatively light. Some Americans invade the House of Assembly and plunder the office of the late clerk, Donald McLean. Houses vacated by terrified women fleeing to the open country are also a target. With her husband absent, Mrs. James Givins, the wife of the Indian Department leader, and her seven children are driven from her home by plunderers who strip it of all valuables—furniture, curtains, bedsheets, liquor, everything from a silver toast rack to an English saddle. And when Judge Powell takes the distressed woman to General Dearborn to complain, the American commander replies that he cannot protect her. To the Americans, the officers of the British Indian Department are pariahs; the scalps taken at Frenchtown earlier in the year have not been forgotten.

The home of Powell’s son, Grant, acting superintendent of the Marine Department, is also looted. Mrs. Powell, his American-born wife, her supper party aborted on the previous evening, had fled to
a neighbour’s. Now she returns to discover Americans in her house, one of them munching on a piece of loaf sugar. A spirited argument follows, with the soldier, a six-footer, getting much the worst of it.

Go home
, says Mrs. Powell,
and mind your own business
.

“I guess I wish I could,” replies the soldier, miserably.

Mrs. Powell relents a little, asks where he lives.

“Down to Stillwater, New York,” he tells her. “I’ve one of Major Bleecker’s farms.”

At which Mrs. Powell bursts into laughter, for Major Bleecker is her father.

As the night deepens, silence falls over the occupied town. Only in the garrison hospital, guarded by five hundred American soldiers, is there activity. Here, scores of desperately wounded men from both sides scream without let-up into the darkness. An American surgeon’s mate, Dr. William Beaumont, records their cries:

Oh Dear! Oh Dear! Oh, my God, my God! Do, Doctor! Doctor! Do cut off my leg, my arm, my head to relieve me from misery! I can’t live! I can’t live!

Beaumont has seen death, but this macabre scene rends his heart—the men groaning and screaming, the surgeons, “wading in blood,” severing limbs with knife and saw or trepanning shattered skulls. The most hardened assassin, the cruellest savage, thinks Beaumont, would be shocked at the spectacle. For forty-eight hours, without food or sleep, the young doctor cuts and slashes, sickened by the carnage of war.

In his eyes these mashed and mangled men are no longer friends or enemies, only fellow creatures. Nobody, he thinks, can view such a spectacle without the blood chilling in his veins; none can behold it without agonizing sympathy.

LITTLE YORK, APRIL 28, 1812

John Strachan is in a state of high dudgeon. The indignity suffered by William Allan is too much; worse, the terms of capitulation have yet to be ratified.

At the home of Prideaux Selby, the dying receiver general, the outraged clergyman encounters William King, the American infantry major who prepared the surrender document the previous day. Strachan goes for King, charges him with breaking his promise to have the document ratified, cries
Deception!
The American retreats a little before this blast, apologizes, urges Strachan to see his superior officer, Colonel Cromwell Pearce who, with Pike dead and Dearborn still aboard
Madison
, is the ranking American officer on shore.

Strachan hurries to the garrison, tackles Pearce in his quarters, demands action. Pearce says he can do nothing but agrees to order rations for the militia, who have been held all night in the blockhouse without food or medicine. Now the militant clergyman demands to be taken out to meet Dearborn himself; but before a boat can be arranged the General lands, accompanied by the Commodore of the fleet, the corpulent Isaac Chauncey.

Dearborn is in a bad humour, clearly nonplussed by the presumption of this cleric badgering him over minor details of a surrender the General considers a
fait accompli
. Strachan brandishes the articles of capitulation; Dearborn glances at the document without comment. Strachan persists: when will Dearborn parole the officers and men of the militia? When will he allow the townspeople to care for their own sick and wounded? Dearborn’s irritation grows. Who are the conquered here? Who the conqueror? Who is this strange civilian with the thick Scots burr who seems to think he can deal with generals? He tells Strachan, harshly, that the Americans have been given a false return of the captured officers, then warns him away.
Keep off
, he orders Strachan;
don’t follow me around
. He has more important business to attend.

Strachan will not be diverted. He turns to Chauncey, looses a diatribe at him: this is a new mode of treating people in a public character, he says. He, Strachan, has transacted business with greater men than Dearborn without being insulted. Perhaps the delay in signing the surrender document is intentional: to give the riflemen a chance to loot with impunity before the pledges regarding private property are signed. Well, he, Strachan, will not be duped or insulted. Either
the document is signed at once or it will not be signed at all: there will be
no
capitulation! Let the Americans do their worst!